Kostya: A Dark Mafia Romance (Zinon Bratva) Read online

  But she’s already engaged with Tiana, already on the floor beside her, singing a song about a school bus and its wipers. She’s worked Tiana from under the table and out into the open as her singsong voice keeps the tune going.

  “Charlotte, your job description has changed.”

  She cocks her head and stares at me. “This was a one-time thing,” she says cautiously. “Seasonal, remember?”

  “This is more important than that.”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to anything along those lines,” she says carefully. Her eyes are narrowed at me.

  “And I don’t remember asking if you agreed.”

  Tiana interrupts and blurts, “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek! I’ll hide first. Ready, set, go!” She takes off, scampering under the couch. Charlotte plays along, but she keeps her gaze burning in my direction as she slides carefully around the office.

  “What is this new job, Mr. Zinon?” The “Mister” is laced with sarcasm.

  I steeple my fingers together, lean back in my seat, and say, “You are going to move in with me.”

  To my surprise, she just laughs. “You’ve got the wrong girl for that job, sir.”

  I press my thumb to my lips. “I think I have exactly the right one, actually.”

  Again, that blush. Fuck. So damn innocent.

  “Then pitch it to me,” she replies.

  “What?”

  “Pitch me the job.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes now, as she creeps around the couch, still playing games with my daughter. Tiana is giggling from behind the curtains.

  I smile. Apparently, sweet Charlotte is full of a great deal of fire I have never seen before. “You’re good with …” And, goddammit, I’ve fallen again into the infinite fuckability of her lips and forgotten my entire train of thought.

  “Tiana?” She pulls her lips into her mouth, I suppose to hide a smile.

  “Yes. You’re very good with Tiana.”

  Long ago, I learned never to show my emotions during a negotiation. Every interaction requires its own mask, but I am unprepared this time. I haven’t considered anything more than my need to have my daughter cared for.

  “I want you to be a caretaker for her.”

  She’s already shaking her head and Tiana has taken her marker and is writing on the windows now, but I can’t move. This is important to me in ways nothing has ever been.

  “Move in. Set up my house for a daughter. Watch her.”

  Maybe I’m saying it wrong. This isn’t a part of the English language I’ve ever had to use before. I almost add Please before I remember who the fuck I am and who I am speaking to.

  She redirects Tiana back to the chair and they sit together. “What about my job here? I have the plans for the fundraiser next week … the one—” She stands, holding Tiana on her hip as she pulls the folder she handed me earlier. “The one we discussed to, um, distract the media from the Bratva rumors.” She taps the folder open in front of me.

  She’s worried about her job. Her money. It’s fair. No one I’ve ever hired has kept my schedule so tight and tidy or anticipated my needs with such finesse.

  I fold my hands in front of my chin. “I’ll pay you twice what you make now.”

  Her eyes go wide. “That’s very … generous, but I”—her skin grows darker red—“I’ll need something else, too.”

  I watch her, head tilted to the side with curiosity, as she fidgets and tries to smile.

  She stops shuffling, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes as she says, “My sister disappeared and I promised my mom … I need you to find Lila.” She ends strong. Resolute, with a nod of satisfaction and a smile. Eyes open, waiting on pins and needles for my reaction.

  Tiana has both arms around Charlotte’s neck, and Charlotte is cuddling her as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I would pay any amount of money for more of the same.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine,” she echoes. “I’ll consider it.”

  I nod. “You have one week.”

  This feels like a deft, simple solution. Bring Charlotte into my home. Have her care for my child. Brilliant and elegant in one stroke.

  Except my desire to fuck her senseless has grown by unforeseen leaps and bounds. And now she has an even more central role in my life.

  Perhaps not so brilliant after all.

  4

  Charlotte

  A week later, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, bills spread out before me, head in my hands.

  I can’t stop replaying the scene from last week in my head, over and over again.

  Kostya stripping off his shirt …

  The bulging pecs, the rippling abs …

  Stop that. But I can’t.

  The V-cut leading down to his beltline …

  The tattoos, inky and swirling, tracing across his back …

  Stop. That.

  The firm curve of his ass in his suit pants. His zipper, straining against …

  “Okay, hell no! That is too far,” I say to myself.

  “What?” comes my mom’s voice over the phone.

  Shit. I forgot I was on a call with her. My tune-out-Mom skills have gotten too finely honed over the last couple years.

  “Nothing, Mom,” I mumble. “That was just the television.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway,” she continues, “I was saying …” I can hear the jangle of her bracelets clacking together, so I reach over and turn down the volume on the speakerphone until she’s just a tinny voice in the background. She doesn’t really care about what I have to say anyway; she just wants to know that she has a captive audience, so I get back to what I was doing and offer her an “Mhmm” every so often so I can avoid another Gloria Lecture (patent pending).

  The bills I’m shuffling through are, as expected, depressing. They always are. I meant what I said to Kostya—he doesn’t pay me enough. I might be okay if I didn’t have Mom’s ridiculous shopping habits to fund, but Lila isn’t exactly wiring me cash to pick up her share of that, and suggesting to Mom that she get a job would be blasphemy to a degree that even I am not willing to risk.

  I reach over to my laptop and enter in a few line items for new things. The red text glaring back at me lets me know that this will be yet another month where I dip into the meager remnants of my savings to keep my head above water.

  I know that there’s a way out of this. I’ve been mulling it over for seven days straight, ever since Kostya made his absurd, borderline-offensive offer.

  I’ll double your pay. He said it so casually that it made me shiver. I wonder if it’s the money that makes him such an ass sometimes, or if he’s just naturally gifted in that department, and the money is merely a means to express his innate ass-ness. Either way, the result is the same—he dangled a lump of cash in front of me like it meant nothing to him. Which, to be fair, it didn’t, but I am choosing to be insulted nonetheless.

  Not that I can afford to be insulted. Hell, I can’t afford to be anything. I can’t afford to be sick, can’t afford to go on vacation, and sure as hell can’t afford not to at least consider doing what Kostya wants.

  So I’m considering it. But first, I’m gonna have to square up with the way he asked me. Mostly because he didn’t really ask me at all. He told me to do it, as if “Move into my home and take care of my surprise child” is a secretarial order on par with “Please make me twelve copies in black and white.”

  To a man like Kostya—far too used to getting his way at all hours of the day—maybe those things are on equal footing.

  But they aren’t to me. Not by a long shot.

  What the man is asking is for me to uproot my entire life and come camp out in the room next to his. It’s a bad idea on about a billion levels, not the least of which is that I’ve literally masturbated to the image of him taking off his shirt for seven straight nights.

  Putting that aside because I’m not willing to confront that particular snafu in the hours of daylight, it’s a bad idea because I am not exactly an ideal candidate for the job. Yeah, Tiana and I have gotten along easily thus far whenever she visits the office, but I’m far from a qualified babysitter. She’s just cute and wants to play. It isn’t so hard, and it’s better than dealing with one of Kostya’s moods, which have been worse than ever lately.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  Argh, dammit, there she goes again. “Yes, Mom, I’m listening.”

  “Well, what did I just say?”

  “Mom, can you not?” I sigh. “I’ve had a long week at work, and—”

  “You think you’re the only one who’s had it hard lately? I …”

  And then she’s off and running, launching into a new tirade. I admire her energy—holding the kinds of grudges she does would exhaust me to no end. I’m exhausted enough coming home every day as it is.

  Since he first made his offer, Kostya hasn’t been in the office much and has buried me with work, sending terse email after terse email with vague instructions for endlessly complicated tasks. By closing time every day, which lately has been somewhere around 9 p.m., I feel like I’ve torn half my hair out trying to interpret his cryptic one-line messages correctly.

  Babysitting, compared to this BS, would be a walk in the park.

  I open the last envelope in the stack I’ve been going through, withdraw its contents, and then yelp like something shocked me. My jaw drops. “Wait, Mom, are you serious?”

  “Charlotte, I am talking, can’t you see that I—”

  “No,” I say, cutting her off. I hold the bill in my hand and brandish it like a weapon, even though she can’t see me. “You paid for another detective?”

  “This was not a detective!” she protests. “This is a search-and-rescue agency. They specialize in retrieving victims from situation
s of distress, and—”

  “Search and rescue?!” I’m practically screaming at this point. When did I stand up? I can’t remember, but the kitchen chair is knocked over, so I must have leapt to my feet. “Lila is not a fricking captive, Mom! She left on her own! She chose to leave!”

  Silence. Then, sobbing.

  Oh Lord. I’m gonna be paying for this one for the rest of my natural life. But honestly, that’s fine, because I’m sick and tired of being so sick and tired of my mom’s antics. This is, by my count, the eleventh time she has forked over a hefty sum to get some Joe-Schmo, retired-cop, wannabe-James-Bond-type to try and hunt down Lila. They’re sleazeballs who just type my sister’s name into Google and then shrug and give up when there isn’t an address attached before ambling down to the bank to cash my mother’s checks. But my mom believes in each of them with religious zeal. I’m pretty sure she’s still making payments to the third guy.

  Number eleven, though, is the last straw.

  I need money. I need to get a handle on my life. But most of all, I need a little separation from dear old Mama.

  I’m going to take Kostya’s stupid offer. A few months of what amounts to basically paid vacation? No secretary BS, an excuse to dodge Mom for a bit, and a bump in my salary? Sign me up. I’ll deal with the sexual tension and the proximity to an asshole billionaire when the time comes to deal with those things.

  I text Kostya’s private cell number.

  I want quadruple pay. Not double.

  His reply is immediate.

  Done.

  Kostya’s mansion expands over acres of manicured landscape.

  Each one presents a thousand different dangers to a child. A pool without a gate. Second- and third-floor windows that open far enough for her to climb out and tumble to the patio below. Cabinets without child locks. Doors without alarms.

  My list grows with each step I take toward the house. I left Tiana with Kostya so I could go back to my apartment and pack. It’s pathetic, but everything I own fits into four boxes and three suitcases. All of which I’m leaving in the car until tomorrow. No need for Kostya to see exactly how pitiful my life is.

  I stand outside the door. To knock or not to knock? That’s the question I need answered presently. I’m going to live here, although I don’t have a key, so knocking makes sense, right? For now. Until I’m settled in. Or maybe I shouldn’t get settled yet? I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything at the moment.

  Fortunately, the housekeeper pulls the heavy, metal-studded door open and waves me inside. “Miss Lowe,” she says simply. She introduces herself as Marianne. She’s an older woman, probably in her sixties, looks like she’s in her forties, moves like someone in her twenties, and frowns like she’s never known a smile. “You’ll need a code to get inside.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  She shows me the panel outside the door, disguised with a brick façade that matches the exterior of the house. It blends so well, I would’ve never noticed it if she hadn’t pointed it out.

  “For now, you can use the one we give delivery drivers.” She punches the numbers into a keypad, and I make a note of the four-digit combination. “I’ll have Dmitri get you a personal code.”

  Dmitri is the man in charge of house security. He spends his time in a basement room watching cameras that scan the entire property. I ran into him earlier when he helped Geoffrey and Marianne bring in all the purchases I made for Tiana. “Kostya is waiting for you in the hallway on the second floor.”

  “The hallway?”

  Marianne leads me up the stairs, and I see him, leaned against the wall, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets.

  I’ve spent the afternoon telling myself I’m not attracted to him, that he is an asshole and raging narcissist with control issues. Unfortunately, I’m not very convincing, and he’s a lot of man to be attracted to.

  I clear my throat. He looks up and puts a finger over his lips. “She’s sleeping.”

  His whisper is low and deep, soft, and my mind immediately decides it’s wildly seductive. My body responds accordingly. My heart palpitates. My palms sweat. My panties go damp. Shit, again. I can’t be attracted to my boss while I’m living in his house and responsible for his daughter. I will not let myself lose this job because I can’t keep it in my pants.

  Time to remind myself of the mantra I practiced on my way over:

  He’s an asshole.

  He’s shady.

  He’s using you.

  It works. I smile back. Serene. Calm. No indication that, moments ago, I was about to dissolve into a puddle of horny girl goo. “Why are you in the hallway?”

  He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and shrugs. “Waiting for you.”

  I swallow and switch over to a factual conversation. “I bought monitors and set them up this afternoon, so you can see and hear her when you’re not in the same room. Or when you’re at work, and she’s with me; or when she’s sleeping, and you don’t want to wait in a hall until morning.” I hold out my hand. “I can set the app up on your phone.”

  He passes his phone over to me, and when our fingertips brush, I feel something like a jolt of electricity pass between us. This is getting out of hand already. If I don’t figure out how to build an immunity to this attraction, I’m going to end up literally purring at him and losing my cushy job. My sister will never be found. My mom will blame me. And I’ll be unemployable once every other employer in Los Angeles finds out I’m the girl who drooled on, panted over, dreamed of, and ended up falling at the feet of my boss, who for all I know could have one or more women waiting to pounce on him somewhere in this sprawling twelve-bedroom, fifteen-bathroom, with-a-home-gym, movie-theater and guesthouse mansion.

  As soon as I’ve finished with his phone, I’m careful to drop it into his hand and not touch him again. My sanity demands I keep my fingers to myself.

  “Okay. Great.” He can see Tiana and I can smell the remnants of his cologne. The world is a pretty good place. “How about I give you the guided tour?”

  At home, he’s relaxed, smiling, friendly, so different from the man who overpowers the atmosphere in the east tower of the Zinon Enterprises building. He’s traded his suit for a sweater, his slacks for a pair of jeans, his perfectly combed hair for something artfully ruffled. For a moment, I can almost forget that he’s an ass.

  “You’ve seen the living room and kitchen?” I was given a tour earlier by Marianne when I arrived this afternoon. We picked out Tiana’s room—the one adjoining mine on one side and Kostya’s on the other—and a place for the toys Kostya wants me to order.

  I nod.

  “Good. This is your home now.”

  I nod again. He makes it sound so easy. But I doubt I will ever just walk in and kick my shoes off inside the front door. Or leave the dishes until morning because I’m exhausted from being at his beck and call until all hours.

  I can’t forget: this is my workplace now.

  He leads me from room to room, discusses décor, tells me the historical importance of paintings and furnishings. It’s as if he’s reading from a script for all the emotion he puts into it. He has million-dollar artwork and a chair that belonged to the last Russian czar, but I’ve seen more joy in an unemployment line.

  We stop at a door close to the living room. He swings it open. “What do you think about this one?”

  It’s a home gym with rowing machines, a weight set, stationary bicycles, an elliptical trainer, three treadmills, and a wall of mirrors. It’s three or four times larger than the bedroom I chose for Tiana.

  “I’ll have this cleaned out for her. She’ll need toys, books … I want her to have everything she wants.”

  Of course he does. But unless he wants one of those spoiled monster children, he will have to rein in his fatherly enthusiasm and put the checkbook away. But I’m not quite in the position to tell him that.

  Yet.

  Instead, I walk beside him through the room and out the other side to the pool area.

  “Probably have to seal off that door,” he remarks.

  I nod. “Probably” isn’t a strong enough word, but I’m glad he’s sensed the danger. “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

  “And I need a fence for the pool.” He turns to me. “It’s so much to think of. Her safety. Her happiness. I’m responsible for all of it.” His brow crinkles, and he sits heavily on the edge of a plush chaise. “Being a father is … what do I do?”